GooTube Rivals Yahoo and Viacom Join Hands

Enemy's Enemy becomes a great friend. This saying has been characterized by the latest deal between Viacom, which filed a $1 Bn lawsuit against YouTube, and Yahoo which is Google's biggest rival in search advertising space.

According to a CNet News, Yahoo and Viacom have signed a multiyear deal in which Yahoo will serve sponsored search and contextual ads on all 33 Viacom sites including MTV Networks' VH1 and Comedy Central. The deal will get real big one once Yahoo gets all the 140 Viacom sites worldwide which is also a possibility.

Yahoo is really hitting hard on its chief competitors i.e. Google and Microsoft with these deals like this and taking away their key executives as in the case of TellMe Networks.

Google Launches Voice Local Search: 800-GOOG-411

Google's Local Search has got voice now. Today, Google has announced the experimental launch of its voice local search 1-800-GOOG-411, a completely automated system without human operators, which can be used to obtain local business information. The service is based on the local business information available through Google Maps. Now you have best of both worlds, Google's information powerhouse coupled with ease of access through any phone; not necessarily mobile phone. And as usual with all the Google services, it is free!! (Please read the fine print as well stating that you might be charged minutes by your carrier)

The best part about the service is its ability to understand the voice input which will bring a relief from keying in those numbers as demanded by most of the automated systems. Although, key input has also been given as an option, if the system refuses to understand your words.

Talking about the importance of this service from Google's product line perspective, its Pay-Per-Call service for advertisers did not set the world on fire, but a hybrid of voice local search and pay-per-call will be a great one to see.

Assume yourself searching for an Italian restaurant's phone number to book a table through voice search and at the end of the search you are given an option of connecting to the restaurant directly without the need to hang up and dial the number yourself. How easy it will be for users and value for money for advertisers.

Let's see how Google plans to use this service if its experiment is successful.

Google Gets More Mobile

Google has made more advances in its mobile segment with the two recent announcements.

Firstly, LG has announced that it will pre-load all the handsets with Google Apps including Gmail, Blogger and Google Maps and one click access to Google Search starting second quarter of 2007. LG also announced that it will launch 10 new handsets with Google functions. Google also has a similar agreement with Samsung, an LG rival.

The second announcement comes from YouTube, a Google network site, which has announced that it will launch its mobile website for U.S. users in the second half of 2007.

These two announcements prove how hot the mobile market is for web applications and shows Google's efforts in making a lead in the same. The direct competitor for Google in this segment is Yahoo with its OneSearch and the newly launched mobile ad network. Moreover, Yahoo also has similar deals with bith LG and Samsung.

Blogspot is 75% spam: What's The Reality

Today I read a post titled "Blogspot is 75% spam" written by Steve Rubel on his blog. He references a research study conducted by Microsoft in order to analyze how advertisers connect with web spammers.

The report shows that Google's Blogspot.com is being heavily used as "Doorway Domain" for redirection spamming. The redirection spamming is the process through which ads are routed through various syndicators, aggregators and redirection domains and finally posted on spam doorway pages such as a blog hosted on blogspot.com address. The click-through traffice is sent to the advertisers by passing through all the channels in the reverse order. The same is depicted in the image below.


Following is the excerpt from the report "For Layer #1 – doorway domains, we showed that the free blog-hosting site blogspot.com had an-order-of-magnitude higher spam appearances in top search results than other hosting domains in both benchmarks, and was responsible for about one in every four spam appearances (22% and 29% in the two benchmarks respectively, to be exact). In addition, at least three in every four unique blogspot URLs that appeared in top-50 results for commercial queries were spam (77% and 75%)."

Although I do not disagree with the fact that Blogger as a service is being used for spamming which is very normal keeping in mind the publicity of the service and that it is free, I certainly have some concerns with the research methodology and the way it has been reported at various blogs including Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion

1. Since the entire study was built around spam, the numbers reported are the contribution of blogspot.com domain to the spam URLs. This does not takes into account the entire universe of blogs hosted at blogspot.com. Thus it is wrong to say that Blogspot.com is 75% Spam.

2. The report says that the study began with the Live search result for keywords "cheap ticket" which resulted in three spam URLs in the Top 1o results and two of the three were blogspot.com URLs. These URLs, however, do not show up in Google and Yahoo. This certainly raises a question mark on Live Search indexing and filtering methodology.

3. Even Netscape.com has 74% Spam URLs then why only Blogspot.com has been targeted in the report. Is it the effect of the competition!

It is a fact that Blogger is being used for activities like Phishing and Spamming. Apart from commercial spamming, the free service is used by some of the bloggers to raise their Technorati rankings and Search Engine Rankings. However, attaching a certain figure like 75% of it is spam does not hold any truth.

You can download the entire report by clicking here.

Google Phone Was A Rumor!!

All that buzz about Google Phone is proving out to be another rumor as per a post on Engadget which says that at least for now, Google Phone rumor has been shot down. Earlier Engadget released some photographs of the mythical Google Phone.

Richard Kimber, Google's South-East Asia managing director of sales and operations, says, "At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone." This seconds Vint Cerf's statements, who said that becoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from Google's business model.

Google is making obvious advances in mobile web and trying to capture the same through software route, with deals with phone manufacturers like Samsung. Mobile Web and Search are hot markets and will give Google an additional platform for its advertising products.

It seems that we are soon going to see a big announcement from Google on its Mobile Software products as the Google Phone rumor is similar to the Google's Computer one which came out at the time when Google was working on its Web Apps.

Source

Blogger Being Used for Phishing and Spreading Trojans

Security firm Fortinet has reported in one of its advisory releases that Blogger is being used by miscreants to create blogs with embedded malicious codes which installs a trojan on the visitors' PCs or redirect visitors to phishing sites. It is the popularity of Blogger which makes it the attraction of such miscreants.

CNet, further reports of an unnamed official from Google accepting that the blogs appear to be deliberately set up for phishing purpose and investigations are going on.

Google India Launches Cricket Blog Contest: What's Your Spin

Indians love Cricket and Google is cashing on the same to popularize its blogging platform, Blogger, in India. They are on the look out for Cricket Blog King of India for which a contest has been launched recently.

They are also conducting Blogger Roadshows across various cities during the World Cup schedule to reach out to people and introduce them to concept of blogging.

The Award: The Cricket Blog King gets to meet the cricketer Kris Srikkanth which will be shown live on T.V.

YouTube Banned Again: Time To Rethink Web 2.0

After Brazil & Turkey, YouTube seems to have got a similar treatment in Thailand. Beginning past Friday till Saturday evening, YouTube users in Thailand got redirected to website of MICT, the government agency responsible for Internet censorship.

In Thailand, the site was later restored but the ban in Brazil and Turkey was lifted only when YouTube removed the videos which lead to the controversy. The kind of reaction YouTube has faced from government and judges looks bizarre. This series of bans on YouTube and subsequent judgements raises certain concerns in mind about user generated content and the future of web 2.0 companies.

The freedom for users and user-generated content around which the entire Web 2.0 concept revolves goes for a toss when sharing and viewing is banned by force. Users should be deciding what should be shared & seen and what not; however, the democracy of Internet takes a backseat when interest of government or authorities comes forward. Like in case of Thailand, Mashable reports that, the ban could be related to clips from a CNN interview featuring Thailand’s ex-Prime Minister Thaksin who was ousted by the Thai military. It seems that the current regime is not happy about the media exposure Thaskin is getting.

This does not imply that there should not be any censorship on the content but solutions need to be explored to involve users in filtering objectionable content. Although, the voting system used by Digg and other sites is a similar solution but that does not seem to be enough. Suggestions are welcome...!

If we look from a Web 2.0 company's perspective, these kind of situations are really discouraging for startups and headache for established ones. When a giant like YouTube could not stand their ground, in a situation which should not have lead to a ban in the first place, what will happen to a smaller companies. Startups, generally, don't feel comfortable entering areas with lot of legal hassles. If these kind of bans keep coming in, not many startups
will dream of getting into video sharing arena.

I will not be surprised if these kind of activities and judgements, which have set a precedent now, are used as weapons by companies to pull their competitors in court or probably getting banned!!!

Let me know your opinion on this and probable solutions to content moderation if any has come to your mind.

Orkut: Your Email Address Can Be Hacked

Orkut has been in the midst of privacy and security concerns since its launch. There have been many ways through which you can get to know the email address of any person on Orkut even when it is not displayed in the public profile. Although, Google keeps on fixing bugs as and when they are highlighted; however, there seems to be a long way before they can make Orkut a secure social network.

One of the method to know the email address which I came across has been listed below which you can try yourself.

Steps:
1. Open the profile of the person whose email address you wish to know. It can be anyone in the Orkut network.

2. Click on "Ignore User" link as displayed in the screenshot below.

3. Open GTalk and sign in with your ID

4. Click on Settings and select "Blocked"

5. You will find the email address of the person whom you blocked on Orkut.




Let's see how much time Google takes to fix this bug. I am sure before that a lot many email addresses would have become public.

Microsoft Building Google Apps/Zoho Competitor

When Google launched its Online Office suite, Google Apps, not many believed that it will take away Microsoft's market share. There were various reasons supporting this like its focus on Small Businesses, lack of offline presence etc.

Given these reasons, Google Apps is still a killer product and have lead Microsoft to join the Online Office bandwagon. It has been clarified by one of the Microsoft developer, Ted Hilton, in his blog post. Microsoft is developing its response to online office applications like Google Apps and Zoho.

Although the post now stands modified but you can read the portion of original post below:

"The product has tons of potential and will probably be competing with the likes of Google Spreadsheets, DabbleDB, Zoho and JotSpot Tracker. It's a really exciting time to be working on this product! There you have it...my new chapter ..."